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| BBC Film Festival 2007, Glasgow |
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‘Ticket only event’ the signs screamed around Glasgow Green, conjuring up images of T in the Park where the sly attempt to sneak inside under the watchful eye of intimidating security. The BBC Film Festival, however, was a free, public-friendly event that was ticketed only to limit the expected thousands of attendees. The queues were perfectly manageable, though, and in no time at all I was wandering around the site deciding exactly what I wanted to do first.  Crush the rebellion! Away from the Main Stage there were movie screenings scheduled throughout the day and these appeared to be well-attended, audiences spread out on the floors of the large tent in an experience part drive-through movie, part camping.  Antonia Bird ‘Weird and Wonderful’ lived up to is title with a swing band, Buster Keaton footage accompanied by live piano and ‘Paper Cinema’, the aforementioned shadow puppets played out in front of a camera to provide a truly cinematic puppet show created on the fly. The illustrations were delightful, although the experience seemed to be somewhat lost on many of the children who attended. This may have had less to do with the quality of the show itself and more to do with the fact that there were two other tents located nearby providing a more interactive twist. ‘CBBC me and my movie’ offered film workshops and the chance for children to create their own episodes of ‘Young Dracula’ and the massively popular ‘Doctor Who’. The Time Lord was quite the Pied Piper of the event, with the queue leading into the TARDIS-decorated bus snaking out by a good distance for a fair portion of the day. For the 13-19 age group the ‘Blast’ tent offered further treats. Patient attendees queued for the opportunity to have hideous wounds painted upon them (the first teenager I saw with a split forehead gave me quite a turn), be digitally transported into a green screen movie or have a go at stop-frame animation.  Richard Eyre  Stephen Frears Presenter Danny Wallace summed it up best when he joked with the sparse Main Stage crowd, ‘We were asking for it, really, having an outdoor festival. In September. In Glasgow.’ Yet while the crowd noticeably thinned as the day advanced and the sky grew ever darker, each of the undercover events I attended was packed out. As I shivered my way home at the end I felt it had been a day well spent and was positive many of those who had come along, particularly the families, would agree. The biggest downer about the whole affair was picked up upon by many of the guest speakers – British film is not well funded and therefore American movies and British television properties were always going to be necessary to pad the event out into something the average punter would actually be interested in attending. With any luck, events like this will encourage people to demand more funding for their film industry, which once upon a time was respected throughout the world.
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